


The Three Muses

by Eilwynn (Lyn_Laine)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 08:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7040575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyn_Laine/pseuds/Eilwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna and Ginevra are born in Harry and Hermione’s year.  Luna’s mother dies when she is a baby.  Hermione is an accident.  Ginevra is the victim of too many children in a poverty-stricken household.  Meanwhile, Lily is told she can’t have any more children.  Marked by tragedy, all three baby girls end up adopted by the Potters.  This is not as lucky a break as it seems to be on the surface.  </p><p>How different will things turn out if Harry grows up with three sisters?</p><p>Mentor McGonagall.  Multi with Tom Riddle.  Not a harem, but a four-way relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lives Are Changed (A New Beginning)

**Author's Note:**

> In this story, Luna and Ginevra are the same age as Harry and Hermione. Any other changes should be more apparent. 
> 
> Also, I know Rowling writes in accents for certain characters. I find those confusing, so everyone will be speaking plain English.

“I am sorry, Mrs Potter, but you will not be able to have any more children.”

There was a quiet painting on the soft green wall of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow. It showed a beautiful snow-covered scene in a Victorian European village, dark suited and dressed figures a blur in the pool of light from the street lamp keeping out the darkness of the night. Little thatched buildings were blurs of purple outside the circle of light. Smoke hung in the air. As Lily watched, the figures made their way silently along the white, footstep-trodden path. Faint edges of blue surrounded the footsteps in the snow. 

The painting was here in the birthing room in an attempt to make it more serene. There was no wind in the picture, no heavy snowfall, as was usual in portraits; James had wanted fancy decorations to make the cottage more like the manor he had grown up in, something Sirius had teased him for, but Lily knew the truth, which was that truth was rarely showed in art and paintings. It took a special kind of artist to bare true honesty and vulnerability.

The Healer, a stiff Irish woman with a bob of short silver hair and a horribly clinical voice, continued to speak mechanically, Lily staring at the painting over her shoulder.

“The birth appears to have been difficult. There is heavy scarring around the reproductive areas, and there was also an infection, which was when I was called in. This has caused irregular ovulation and fallopian tube disease. The scarring, the ovulation problems, and the fallopian tube disease could all separately mean secondary infertility. Together, they prove a fatal combination. There is no hope,” she added tonelessly.

Lily felt weighted down by the words, like a heavy piece of metal had been hung around her neck near her chest area.

The Healer continued: “I’ve been told you’ve gone into hiding. I’m not certain why, and it’s none of my business, but Albus really should have let me come in earlier and guide you through the birth, you know, this whole thing might have been avoided.”

“You mean - you mean if we’d called you in sooner I could have had a second child?” Lily croaked from the bed she was still confined to. White sheets and sterile whiter cloth hemmed her in from all sides on the vast mattress.

“Look, you!” said James hotly, sitting forward in his seat by the bed, round-rimmed glasses gleaming. “You can’t just come in here and give us this news like it’s nothing important, like you’re talking about the weather -!”

“I must keep an objective persona for the wellbeing of my patients,” said Healer Shricken, glaring severely at James in a distinctly non-objective way. “I am here as a favor to Albus, nothing more.”

“Well - you’re a Healer - there must be something you can do to fix this!” Still James, his tone accusatory, his hands flinging wildly.

“I cured her of the infection, but I cannot go back in time and make it so that the infection never happened. That, Mr Potter, is beyond even my powers,” said the Healer, raising a thin, overly arching silver eyebrow. She had an old, pale, lined look to her, her face thin and drawn. For someone who specialized in health, her appearance did not inspire confidence. “As for the scarring, it had already healed over by the time I’d arrived. In order to take away the scars, I would have to reopen the wounds, in which case your wife may bleed to death.”

James suddenly sat down, looking almost as pale as Healer Shricken. “Well - well, no -” he said feebly. “We don’t want that.”

“Quite right,” said Healer Shricken self-righteously. “And in any case, it would not change the fact that -”

“The irregular ovulation and the fallopian tube disease would still be there,” Lily whispered. Healer Shricken could do nothing for them, and even she was taking a risk in coming here. Every Healer at St Mungo’s could not know where the Potters were hiding. They were out of options.

Lily stared dully at her hands. How stupid they were, she thought, folded neatly in her lap in the middle of a crisis. These hands could do amazing magic, but they could not bring her a second child.

“You have one healthy baby boy,” said Healer Shricken frostily. “You are lucky. I myself have never been able to have any children. I would suggest you enjoy the son you have. Some couples never get that far.”

“Is that supposed to make us feel better?” James demanded disbelievingly. 

“I was only saying -”

James stood and pointed. “Get out.”

“Really!” The Healer huffed and bustled indignantly out of the room, smoothing down her lime green robes decorated with the crossed wand and bone symbol on the way out. That image of a bone was imprinted in Lily’s mind’s eye. She suddenly felt she was filled with corpses.

James knelt down beside Lily’s bed, taking her hand and looking her in the face, his hazel eyes intense. She’d always hoped to have a child with James’s eyes - Harry had her own green ones. Those hopes were dashed now. James was very handsome, with messy dark hair, hard lines of a face, and an athletic build. And she couldn’t know - Harry might look nothing like his father. 

“We’ll find a way!” said James. “We’ll have more children! Is that what you want?”

“But how -?”

“Is that what you want?”

“... Yes,” Lily admitted, whispering. “I’d always hoped Harry would have siblings. Lots of them. And… And I always wanted a daughter,” she admitted, looking away, ashamed, in a strange way, of her own desires.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said James, standing. “We’ll have daughters!”

“But the Healer said -!”

“Screw the Healer! We… we can adopt! We can have some sort of special in vitro surgery done. We can -” He was just bouncing ideas off the top of his head, as he was wont to do, but Lily finally latched onto something like it was a lifeboat.

“Could we?” She sat forward eagerly. “Adopt?”

“What - now?” said James, caught off guard.

Lily’s excitement faded. “You don’t want to do it.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just - it’s a little soon, isn’t it? Harry was just born a little while ago.” James’s eyes were round with surprise and uncertainty.

“It wouldn’t be good to have them too far apart. Siblings get along better when they’re closer in age,” said Lily warmly, leaning forward. The idea had quickly grown on her. They could adopt little girls - sisters for Harry. “I want my son to be comfortable being around women. I don’t want him to grow up to become some macho, misogynistic man. I want him to have siblings - people he can rely on - particularly if the prophecy comes to pass.”

James and Lily sobered. There was a moment of silence.

“... Alright,” said James, unusually serious, his wild, determined playfulness fading. “We’ll try it. Let’s see what Dumbledore thinks.”

“Oh, he’ll agree to help us from where we are,” said Lily, steel entering her voice. “I’m going to pointedly remind him it’s his fault this happened in the first place. If he hadn’t confined me to this cottage for the birth, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

-

The Potters sat down across the cafe table in Godric’s Hollow from the two Muggles, Wendell and Monica Granger. Monica was dark-haired and tanned and glamorous, lovely, Wendell the picture of dignity with a fancy coat and a pair of silver spectacles. They did not strike you as the kind of person who would be considering giving up their baby daughter.

The cafe gleamed around them, the colorful little chairs and tables, the eccentric animal pictures on the yellow walls, the gleaming front window advertising The 6th Street Hub. Wendell had sneered slightly upon coming in, but it was Lily’s favorite place, homey and country-like and comforting. That was why she’d asked for the meeting to be here. 

James and Lily were not at all certain of this. They did not want a Muggle child to always feel inferior growing up in a wizarding household, but Lily sat next to Mrs Hasten, a Muggle, in sewing circle on Fridays. She’d begun the whole thing as a way to fit in, find friends, and she’d made the mistake of telling Mrs Hasten about her desires to adopt a daughter.

“Oh!” said Mrs Hasten, her eyes lighting up. “I know someone who will just fit the bill!” And Lily had then been unable to talk her out of setting up a meeting.

“So, Mr Granger,” said Lily politely, addressing Wendell Granger, none of her misgivings showing on the surface, “I understand you knew Mr Hasten in secondary school.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr Granger, clearing his throat nervously with a sound like chalk snapping. “We were quite close. He moved to Godric’s Hollow to work in a machine shop and I moved to London to pursue my degree in pediatric dentistry.”

“That’s actually why we’re here,” said Monica. “We’re both studying to become dentists.”

“Ah, so you want to work on people’s teeth,” said James loudly. Lily had explained to him what this meant and he was showing off the new information.

“Yes, exactly. And we don’t have time to look after a baby, and, well -” Monica looked down, embarrassed. “The pregnancy came as a bit of a surprise. Perhaps if we’d gone to school younger, or it had happened a few years later, but -”

“We just want her to go to a good home,” said Wendell, staring baldly at them with clear blue eyes, not nearly as embarrassed as his wife was. He put an arm around Monica. “The timing’s just not right. We’re requesting a closed adoption - we don’t want her to desire something she can’t have.”

Lily got the sudden impression this had mostly been Wendell Granger’s idea.

“Is that the girl with you?” said Lily, pointing to a little pink stroller.

“Yes,” said Monica. “Her name is Hermione, after the Shakespearean character. You can take a look, if you want,” she added, when Lily moved awkwardly forward and then aborted the movement.

Lily bent down before the stroller as James asked Wendell in mystification why anyone would want to work on people’s teeth for a living. Another chalk-snapping sound, and then Wendell went on for a long time and in greatly boring detail about pediatric dentistry. Lily looked at the little girl, watched over hawkishly by Monica, and Lily began to revise her opinion that the adoption idea had solely been Wendell’s.

Hermione had a short head of brown hair, a dark tannish beige skin tone, and brown eyes. She was in a little pink and white dress and hat. She looked up solemnly at Lily, and then cooed and reached out a hand. “Hi,” said Lily softly, smiling and waving, and then she reached out and put a hand to Hermione’s - and felt something, a sudden flash of electricity. Not metaphorically. Literally.

It was magic. Hermione was magic.

Lily’s eyes had widened and she stood. “James,” she said, falsely calm, “could you come help me with something for a minute?”

James stood quickly, and the Grangers stared after them as he followed her to the back of the cafe. “What is it?” he said softly, looking into her face as they stood close together next to the checkout counter. It was unmanned; the hostess was off helping someone else to their seats.

“She’s like me,” was all Lily could force out, and they both knew what that meant.

Surprise and recognition flickered into James’s eyes. “You mean she’s -? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Lily. Hermione was a Muggleborn.

James walked straight back over to Grangers, who were still frozen in surprise. “We’ll take her,” he said firmly, fearlessly flying in the face of hundreds of years worth of Pureblood traditions. Again.

-

“I’m not so sure about this,” James was saying next, as they stood in a private conference room in the center of the wizarding adoption agency, Magic of Love. Little flying paper airplanes carrying missives flittered in and out of their own accord. The agency beyond them through the glass windows gleamed with yet more glass and silvery grey tile.

“Relax, these meetings with biological parents are always nerve-wracking,” said Colette, an overly chipper brunette with synthetically smooth hair who was wearing the typical uniform of purple robes with small pink hearts on the sleeves.

“Besides, I knew Pandora in school. I couldn’t even attend her funeral when she died because we were in hiding,” Lily muttered back.

“You shouldn’t do this out of some sort of guilt complex," said James. "The Lovegoods are weird people. Xeno runs the Quibbler, the most infamous rag full of ridiculous nonsense in the entire wizarding country, and Pandora was an Unspeakable for the Department of Mysteries; she died during an explosion from one of her own magical experiments.”

“And she left a baby girl named Luna behind. We’re assessing the situation. We can always decline,” Lily hissed.

James was about to respond heatedly, but then was when there was a knock on the door. Xenophilus Lovegood shuffled into the room. He was in a bad way. He’d always been slightly cross-eyed with stringy, shoulder-length hair, but the hair appeared to have turned white in the months since his beautiful, warm, eccentric wife had died and his clothes were shabbier and odder than ever - he was wearing a sleeping cap and one of the sleeves of his robe was far shorter than the other.

He looked at them sideways and began muttering to himself. “Can’t stay too long - official looking office - probably bugged - don’t like these people - Pandora wouldn’t approve -”

James stepped deliberately in front of his wife. He cleared his throat and called out in a false friendly way, “Xeno! How are you?”

But Xenophilus continued muttering to himself. “Probably plants - can’t let them get Luna - far too friendly -”

Lily looked over helplessly at Colette, who shrugged. Apparently, since Pandora’s death, this was nothing unusual. And there was no one to help Xeno, either - he was alone with a baby.

“Xeno,” Lily began softly, sympathetic, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for the funeral -”

And suddenly Xeno exploded. “SHE’S NOT GONE! SHE’S NOT GONE!” James and Lily had drawn their wands. War had made them a little jumpy. Xeno was spitting, his eyes wide and mad. “YOU CAN’T TELL ME SHE’S GONE! SHE’S OFF ON A TRIP - IN ANOTHER DIMENSION - SHE’S TOLD ME SO - I CAN STILL HEAR HER - SHE’S NOT GONE -”

Security-people in black robes with pink hearts on the sleeves suddenly stormed in, pulling out their wands and stunning Xeno in jets of red light. There was a moment of confused, shouting chaos, and then Xeno sagged, eyes blank and mouth open, and was pulled, staggering, out of the room.

Lily had a hand over her mouth, her eyes stinging.

“We - we have to help her,” James realized quietly. A look of permanent horror seemed to have been etched onto his face.

“But he made it pretty clear he doesn’t like us,” Lily admitted, swallowing, her voice trembling.

“Actually, in his more lucid moments he seemed to think the adoption was a great idea,” Colette admitted. “As he is now, I doubt he’ll even remember you were here. I’d hoped he’d be better today, but… He says she has her mother’s eyes. That he can’t stand looking at her. He knows she needs to go somewhere else. Sometimes he’ll even admit his wife is dead.”

“... If he’ll agree, we’ll take her,” said Lily. 

And so they received Luna at their home through Colette and Dumbledore. The adoption was closed - all adoptions in this particular agency were closed. Xeno would not even know who had gotten his daughter, out of the several couples who had asked. But with the Potters’ money, their good reputation, and their influence with Dumbledore, it had been easy to be the ones who got the girl. 

Luna was a tiny, pale blonde thing with big blue-grey eyes exactly like Pandora’s. She was wearing yellow robes with an anemone embroidered onto their fronts.

“Yellow and anemone,” said Lily sadly, when James looked confused. “They both can mean parting.”

Luna flailed little arms up at them.

-

Their next time in the conference room with Colette officiating was far quieter, but not any less sad. They were only there this time because Xeno had been mentioned in the biological parents’ letter of introduction.

“We want a bit more distance between us and the parents this time,” James had mandated. 

“They’ll still have to meet with you,” said Colette. “But I think we can make that happen.”

Lily immediately felt embarrassed and overdressed, sitting down across from Molly and Arthur Weasley. Molly Weasley was a plump little brunette witch, her body changed after having seven children but her beauty still clear. Arthur’s red hair was balding now, and he wore glasses. They both wore shabby robes - obviously their best, but still shabby. Molly was a stay-at-home mother and Arthur worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office at the Ministry. They didn’t make very much money, and they had seven children now with their baby daughter Ginevra.

There was a glass wall dividing the conference room between the Potters and the Weasleys. The Weasleys, who looked uncertain, could not see the Potters, but the Potters could see the Weasleys. A wall of anonymity. It made Lily almost as uncomfortable as she was sure it made the mother and father.

'Hello,' Lily wrote on a piece of parchment with a quill, 'how is your work going?' James drew a smiley face below it. The words appeared on a piece of parchment before the Weasleys.

“Oh, so that’s how this works!” they heard Molly say, delighted, and then she scribbled back.

'It’s work. We don’t have much money. You must understand, we love our daughter very much, but we can’t provide for her. It’s been a particularly bad year. That’s the only reason we’re thinking about agreeing to this.'

'We’re neighbors with Xeno Lovegood, if you’ve heard him come through,' Arthur added.

“Maybe we shouldn’t say that,” Molly whispered, obviously not aware they could be heard. 

“There’s nothing wrong with being friends with Xeno,” Arthur maintained stubbornly, and the Potters smiled at the loyalty.

'We have a great deal of money,' Lily wrote back, 'and so much love to give your daughter.' These were the only important factors for her and James, they had agreed; that they were a full-blown witch and wizard need not be mentioned.

Molly put a hand over her mouth and tears filled her eyes. Suddenly, in a hurried movement, she lifted up a tiny baby girl to the blank mirror. The girl had a freckled face, brown eyes, and a short head of reddish-gold hair. She wore a little one-piece suit. She opened her mouth and made a little noise.

'She is a very sweet girl. Please give our daughter a good home,' Molly wrote back, wiping tears away from her eyes. Then Arthur hugged her and she began crying into his shoulder.

James and Lily looked at each other.

“We need a reason,” James pointed out. “We can’t just take a fourth baby without a reason.” He wasn’t protesting; merely stating a fact.

“We have the money, and she has red hair like me,” said Lily stoutly, whose own hair was a long, dark crimson. “There you are. Two reasons. Also I like them.” 

It was true they had the money - the Potters were the Muggle equivalent of millionaires; they owned the rights to several major medicinal potions and made several million pounds a year, about fifty thousand Galleons per year.

James smiled despite himself. “I like them too,” he admitted. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing this… Alright.” He smiled ruefully. “Let’s do it. But that’s it. No more!”

Lily’s delight was still clear. A curvy, pretty little woman, she had him wrapped around her ring finger and they both knew it.

The Weasleys, like Xeno, would never know for certain who had adopted their daughter. The Weasleys had been calling her Ginny, but Lily preferred the long, beautiful Ginevra.

Lily wanted a daughter. James gave her three. 

More importantly for the purpose of this story, he also gave black-haired little Harry Potter three sisters of his exact same age.

-

A runic circle had been drawn onto the living room floor of Godric’s Hollow. Three baby girls lay on a vast gold, cream-lace-sheeted altar in the north side of the circle. The Potters were off to the side; Sirius Black, the girls’ new godfather, stood beside them. All were in black robes. An elderly, silvery-bearded, balding Wiccan priest in formal blue robes stood officiating in front of the altar.

“With this blood, I make you each of the parents this blood is from,” said the priest. He injected a little vial of James’s blood into each girl’s arm, and a little vial of Lily’s blood into each girl’s arm. The needle weaved in and out in expert fashion. Then the priest’s wand was waved; the runic circle glowed gold, the pricks magically healed, and the babies all began crying. 

Outwardly, they were unchanged. But inwardly, they had changed irrevocably.

“I now pronounce you Ginevra Potter, Hermione Potter, and Luna Potter,” said the priest loudly over their cries. “May it be so.”

He stepped out of the circle and the wave of tingling magic faded.

Lily and James hurried forward and took the girls into their arms. They laid them on the sofa beside their brother, Harry. The rest of the cottage was as the bedroom was, decorated in fancy little touches and seaside shades, with soft cream-colored furniture. 

“We have so much to do,” said Lily busily. “We have to take them through the village and the countryside around it. We have to set up a trust fund for each of them that money trickles into each year, we have to name them our heirs, we have to name Sirius their godfather in our will. We have to furnish them each a beautiful bedroom. We have to -”

“We’ll get there,” said James in amusement, putting a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “One thing at a time.”

“Next thing we know, you’ll be the Weasleys,” said Sirius dryly, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall, dark hair falling into his handsome eyes in a way many women found attractive. “Adopting children left and right.”

“No, thank you,” said James flatly, and Lily and Sirius laughed. The crying had faded now. The four Potter children were blinking sleepily in the warm, friendly quiet.

“Oh, I just have so much love to offer them,” said Lily, her heart swelling. They felt like her children, strangely, more so than they had before. “I can’t wait to get started!”

-

When Lord Voldemort peered into the cottage’s sitting room that night, he saw four children, not one. Naturally he had been informed; the Potters had adopted three infant girls. They would have to die, of course, all the children had to die. It was best to be on the safe side.

The father was making puffs of colored smoke erupt from the end of his wand for the amusement of the small children below him. The boy was in blue pajamas, the girls were in expensive nightgowns. The boy was small with black hair and green eyes, one girl was a tan-skinned brunette, one a freckled redhead, and one a pale grey-blue-eyed blonde. They were all giggling and laughing, trying to catch the puffs of colored smoke, clenching hands around elusive mist.

A door opened and the mother entered, saying words Lord Voldemort could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. She picked up two children and the father picked up two, both of them throwing their wands down in order to do so. The mother’s was on a table, the father’s on the living room sofa. They began carrying the children toward what appeared to be the staircase, past their strollers, and to their beds.

The front gate creaked a little. A wand came out. The front door was blasted off its hinges. James gave the children to their mother and came sprinting into the hall, wandless.

“Lily, take the children and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!”

Without a wand? Voldemort laughed as he cast the Killing Curse. Green light lit the hall, and in mid-charge James Potter fell limply to the ground, lifeless.

Lily Potter reached Harry’s room, and began screaming as she realized she was trapped on the floor above with no wand. Voldemort mounted the stairs, listening in amusement as the mother began to barricade herself inside one child’s bedroom. She was the only one with nothing to fear. But even she was stupid. How naive, how foolish, to think safety lay in love, in one’s friends. It was their friend who had betrayed them. They had put their weapons down, which could not be allowed, not even for a moment, and it would destroy their family.

With another wand wave the boxes and chair leaning against the door were thrown away, the door forced open. The children were standing there in the crib. The mother stood in front of the crib, her arms thrown wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding her children she hoped to be chosen herself. 

“Not my children, not my children, please not my children!”

“Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside now.”

“Not my children, please no, take me, kill me instead -”

“This is my last warning -”

“Not my children! Please… have mercy… have mercy… Not my children! Not my children! Please - I’ll do anything - I’ll do whatever you want - just spare my children’s lives - Please - Please -” She was crying. The stupid woman was crying.

He did not understand this irrational need to protect another person at the threat of one’s own life. It was ridiculous.

“Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”

But Lily Potter would not stand aside. All the children were crying by now; one girl had taken the cue from her mother and started them all going. He never had been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage. Perhaps that was why he cast the Killing Curse. Perhaps it was all of it.

The green light flashed and Lily Potter dropped dead like her husband.

And there were the crying children. If he cast a strong enough curse, which of course he could, he could kill them all in one go. Yes. It was best that way. He stood off to the side of the crib, to get them all at an angle, in one straight line. He pointed the wand, and looked closely at the crying children. He wanted to see it, the destruction of this one inexplicable threat. The boy had been prophesied to destroy him, but help from witches and other female magicians always came in groups of three and the minute these girls had become Harry Potter’s sisters they had become just as deadly as their brother. Loyalty, he had learned from his Pureblood followers, was typically familial unless it was trumped by some other value. These girls could be the reason the boy was strong enough to be a threat in the first place.

“Avada Kedavra!”

It all happened in quick succession. The boy jumped in front of his sisters - the curse hit his arm - the girls screamed - and then Lord Voldemort saw a solid wall of magic. Not just from one. But from all four of them. Glowing gold, it shoved the spell back. Green light filled his vision and Lord Voldemort felt the most horrible pain and the most stark, utter terror he had ever experienced.

And a few moments later, there was no Lord Voldemort at all. There was a fiery hole blasted in the roof of the cottage and four screaming, living children. But one other thing remained, unseen by everyone; it circled around the room, until it entered the only thing it could - The lightning bolt shaped cut in the upper left arm of Harry Potter.

All four children were protected from Lord Voldemort by blood and love. All four were considered threats from henceforth onward. But only one was marked and prophesied about.

The Potter children were now the wealthiest wizarding orphans in the country. Lily had given them what she had promised: money and love.

-

The next day, Vernon Dursley was on his way past a group of robed weirdos, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, and he caught a few words of what they were saying.

“The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard -”

“Yes, their children - the three girls and the boy -”

“Four children of the same age? How?”

“No one knows. No one’s sure of all their names either. Perhaps they were quadruplets?”

“Well, I heard that -”

Mr Dursley stopped in his tracks, suddenly consumed with overriding fear. The Potters were the very antithesis of the Dursleys. Eccentric, strange, magical, imaginative, and many-childrened, the Dursleys had never so much as had them over to dinner, despite being related to them. Vernon and Petunia had no desire to speak with James and Lily, and in any case, they didn’t want Dudley mixing with such a ratty, strange group of children as they were sure the Potters must be. The Potter girls had been adopted, on top of everything else, an institution that was certainly not to be trusted.

Could people know? Could the Dursleys have been found out as being related to such… strangeness?

Vernon had to tell himself not to panic, not to call his wife, for the rest of the day. There was no evidence besides that one overhead conversation, and… and Potter wasn’t such an unusual name, was it? He was sure there were lots of people with several children called Potter. He didn’t even remember how many girls and boys there were in the Dursleys’ Potter family, really. Could it really have been three girls and a boy?

But later, he asked Petunia at home over evening tea, trying to be covert, and she confirmed it contemptuously: “Three girls and a boy. Far too many children, if you ask me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. “Yes, I quite agree.”

When he went to bed, he was still wondering. Was it their Potters? Was it really? He wasn’t worried about them, far from it.

Mr Dursley was worried that this would affect him and his family. Good riddance to his relatives.

-

It was midnight on a darkened Muggle suburban street called Privet Drive. Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore, both in robes, were sitting on a low garden wall surrounded by neat hedgerows in the quiet, in front of number four, the Dursleys’ house, a big white square box of a thing paid for by Vernon’s corporation. 

Dumbledore had just finished confirming for McGonagall that the Potter couple was dead. She had taught them in school, and she was severely shaken.

“That’s not all. They’re saying he tried to kill the Potter’s children,” said McGonagall, her voice shaking. “But - he couldn’t. He couldn’t kill those small children. No one knows why, or how, but they’re saying that when he couldn’t kill the Potter children, Voldemort’s power somehow broke - and that’s why he’s gone.”

Dumbledore nodded glumly.

“It’s - it’s true?” faltered Professor McGonagall. “After all he’s done - all the people he’s killed - he couldn’t kill a group of children? It’s just astounding… of all the things to stop him… but how in the name of heaven did the Potter children survive?”

“We can only guess,” said Dumbledore. “We may never know.”

“Three girls and a boy, isn’t it? All of the same age?”

“That is correct. The girls were adopted, and became related by blood to Lily and James in a blood ritual. The boy, Harry, is the Potters’ biological son. I would appreciate you keeping their adoption quiet, as well as their names. As little information should be known as possible. That’s why I’m here,” said Dumbledore seriously.

“What do you mean?” said McGonagall.

“I mean that the biological parents may demand their daughters back, and Harry needs all the help he can get,” said Dumbledore. “They will be sent here. Instead of growing up spoiled as targets of political assassination in our world, they will be raised anonymously in a Muggle world here far away from all magic. Their last remaining relatives, Lily’s sister and her family the Dursleys, live in the house behind us.”

“Albus. I've been watching them all day. They’re vile people,” said Minerva quietly. “And they’ll never understand those four children, putting aside any resentment they might feel having several children foisted off onto them with no compensation.”

“I know. The pros just outweigh the cons,” Dumbledore admitted dully, staring straight ahead of himself and looking tired.

Shortly afterward, Hagrid arrived on his flying motorbike. He had two slings, one on his front and one on his back, two babies asleep in each sling.

“Young Sirius Black lent the bike to me. I’ve got them, sir,” said Hagrid, swinging off his motorbike.

“No problems, were there?”

“No, sir. Sirius Black put up a bit of a fight, saying the children rightfully belonged to him. But I said Dumbledore’s orders, and in the end he agreed. House was almost destroyed, but I got them out alright before the Muggles started swarming around. I’ve been driving all night and all day. They fell asleep just as we was flying over Bristol.”

That answered Albus’s question. He’d felt the wards around the Potter home drop, and had been wondering if the Ministry would be quick enough to interfere with the children’s move into a new home. Apparently not. Even Sirius Black wasn’t putting up a fight. Good.

The children would be safer here. The blood wards from Lily would protect their home as long as they lived with Lily’s family. At least until they turned seventeen and could defend themselves.

Dumbledore took the children and laid them on the doorstep of number four, tucking a letter of explanation for the Dursleys inside Harry’s blankets. Tears were shed, goodbyes were said, and then they all went separate ways.

Dumbledore stopped at the end of the street after he’d turned all the lights back on. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four. “Good luck, you four,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. The Potter children slept on, not knowing they were special, not knowing they were famous, not knowing there would be books written about them, not knowing every child in the wizarding world would grow up learning about the mysterious, disappearing Potter children. They also did not know that they would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor did they know that they would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by their cousin Dudley… They couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses amidst parties and saying in hushed voices, “To the Potters - the children who lived!”


	2. Amigo and a Book of Snake Speak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place in modern day.
> 
> The differences should start to become more apparent in chapter three, though there are some key differences in this chapter.

Approximately Ten Years Later 

The sun rose over Privet Drive, glowing shades of pink and gold and orange, turning the sky brilliant colors in the cool, dewy morning air. It crept over the garden gate of number four and the neat hedgerows, over the tidy flower beds in the front garden, over the front step and the vast white-painted stained-glass door with its mail slot. It snuck into the Dursleys’ large living room through its vast curtained window, over the plush carpets and the flowers in vases, the armchairs, sofa, and television, the vast red-brick fireplace. 

Photographs sparkled in the morning sunlight on the gleaming mantel piece. All of them featured a large blond boy, the Dursleys’ son Dudley. They were still Muggle frames of course; the Dursleys were as Muggle as you got. There was no photographic evidence at all in the house that the Potters even existed, though they were still there. They had nowhere else to go. 

The entire place was spic and span, no toys left out anywhere, the rooms having a purposeful feeling of empty airiness. There were no animals, no dogs or cats. The Dursleys’ house did not have a lived-in feel. It emanated an aura of one constantly trying to impress, a feeling of ‘look, but don’t touch.’ It was pristine, sterile, and lifeless.

Petunia Dursley was always awake first. She mounted the stairs and approached the smallest bedroom, which was where the little monsters were kept. 

Inside, all four of them were squeezed into two bunk beds in a single room, which had no space for anything else except a small window on the far wall. Not that this mattered. The Potters had never been bought many possessions, and Dudley’s bullying and their aunt and uncle’s constant chores had neatly prevented them from ever having ordinary things like hobbies. They were asleep right now, but their Aunt Petunia was about to ruin that.

“Up! Get up! Now!” The Potters woke with a start to a jack-hammering sound on the door and an almost incoherent screech. “UP!” They heard Aunt Petunia’s heels clack away. She was a bony blonde woman with a pinched bird face, in a fancy house dress, her hair up in a chiffon. Petunia Dursley was the kind of person who wore heels even around the house and to bridge club, the perfect firm director’s suburban wife with the perfect makeup.

Ginevra groaned into her pillow and Luna sighed minutely, eyes closing for a moment. But all three girls pulled themselves out of bed and began to get ready for the day. 

“Harry,” said Luna gently, shaking her brother in his bed. “Harry.”

“You really should get up, you know,” Hermione told her brother quietly, pulling off her nightshirt. The Potters had gotten used to seeing each other naked. “Aunt Petunia will be back soon.”

Luna stood back, hand on her hip, as Harry rolled over and pulled the covers over his head. He was always the last to get up.

At last, Ginevra threw a pillow at Harry’s face boredly on the way by. She was not exactly a morning person herself.

“Bugger off,” he said, annoyed, but he sighed, got to his feet, and put on his glasses. He didn’t mean it. One thing the Potters had learned after a few rousing arguments, growing up four people to a room in a house where they were not allowed to make noise, was how to get along with one another and not easily take offense.

Aunt Petunia was back outside the door. “Are you up yet?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Ginevra, irritated.

“Good! I want you to clean the house, water the garden, and look after and finish breakfast! And don’t you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy’s birthday.”

Ginevra was mouthing the last part, making a ridiculous, pinched face, and Harry was trying not to laugh. Luna looked somewhere between politely puzzled and annoyed at Aunt Petunia’s sickly sweet, adoring tone when she mentioned her son. Hermione had looked down, as shy as she always was.

The Dursleys had effects on the Potters in different ways. Harry had become silent, passive, and irritable. He took the path of least resistance and slept a great deal. Ginevra had become vicious and embittered, determined to be great, desiring to be envied, with a strong dislike of being ignored. Conversely, she was also hard, the most difficult to shake up or break. Hermione had become shy, quiet, gentle, vulnerable to temptation, and afraid of utter loneliness. But she was braver and more perceptive than any of the others when it came to seeing the flaws and weaknesses in her relatives. Luna had become wise beyond her years, the sunny one most desirous of love, as if in retaliation against the dark plainness of her life, but she also had a hidden hard, stubborn, moral side that none of her siblings had any desire to ram into. There was a hardness to her sunny wisdom, an understanding of life’s darker portents.

And so they got dressed. Harry got Dudley’s ragged, faded secondhand clothes that were four times too big for him. They made him look even smaller and skinnier than he really was. (All the Potters were small and skinny, a result of often being underfed.) His messy black hair was cut in all the wrong way. His round glasses made his angular face look too thin, and the way they were taped in the center took the focus away from his bright almond-shaped green eyes.

Harry’s glasses were taped because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. Dudley spent his lunchtimes at school and his summers chasing the Potters around, trying to catch them. The girls didn’t have it as bad - the huge Dudley and his gang would shove them, yank at their hair, trip them in front of their childhood crushes, those sorts of things. But he wouldn’t beat them up.

Harry, he had no qualms about beating up. Harry and his sisters had learned to be fast, because if Harry was caught he’d get the snot beaten out of him by his cousin. Harry was a slim, agile person, capable of great speed; he often outstripped his sisters.

Hidden from the world on Harry’s upper left arm was a lightning bolt shaped scar. Aunt Petunia had told them once, when they’d asked, that Harry had gotten it in the car crash that had killed their parents. “And don’t ask questions,” she’d snapped, storming away. ‘Don’t ask questions’ was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. This meant the Potters knew nothing else about their parents or their past - there weren’t even any photographs of their parents in the house. So they had no way of knowing why they all looked so different, something Hermione had noticed first and Luna had then picked up on.

The Potter girls didn’t get hand-me-downs from Dudley. Having a girl in rags would make the Dursleys look poor. It was hard to write off ruined clothes on a girl in the same way one could on a rough and tumble boy, and as the Dursleys were the sort of corporate suburban people who cared a great deal about appearances, the girls did get actual new dresses. But Aunt Petunia bought them. And Aunt Petunia always ensured the Potter girls looked just as ugly as their brother.

Ginevra’s long hair was cut so that her face and body looked as skinny, bony, and unflattering as possible. She was always bought clothes that clashed with her skin and hair coloring, making her hair look ketchup colored, her face look sallow, and her freckles look dark.

Hermione had crooked teeth that made her two front teeth look more pronounced. This had never been fixed. Her hair was very bushy and frizzy when it was long, but she was never allowed to cut it short. She, too, wore clothes that clashed with her skin and hair coloring.

Luna had long, stringy blonde hair and too-big eyes. Her clothes made the pallor to her skin look positively sickly, and she, too, was not allowed to cut her hair short. She was also never bought makeup or non-prescription glasses, the only real ways to make big eyes look smaller. The Dursleys said the Potters cost enough to keep around, and they didn’t want the extra expenditure.

None of the Potters had any friends because of Dudley and his gang’s bullying - they were even picked last for gym - but it was Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon who always ensured their crushes never looked twice at them. It was part of the reason the four of them had banded so closely together. They were always being attacked by outside forces.

As they were getting dressed, Harry said seriously, “... I had the dream again.”

“Of the flying motorcycle ride and the night sky?” said Luna, concerned.

“Yeah.”

It was a recurrent dream they’d all had. They were unsure what it meant, and couldn’t ask the Dursleys about it. The Dursleys had forbidden them from talking about anything imaginative, including dreams and cartoons. They were not allowed to read or draw anything fantastical. The Dursleys seemed to think such things might give them dangerous ideas.

“One day we’ll buy a motorcycle,” said Ginevra now in the privacy of their room. “And we’ll get it to fly.”

“We could,” said Hermione curiously, brightening, as the Potters looked excited. “When we’re adults, I mean. It would be something to look forward to.”

Strange things had always happened around the Potters - odd instances of people floating, things changing color, shape, and size, things vanishing from existence entirely. All unexplainable events. Hermione had realized these things only ever happened around them, in response to their secret desires. Dudley would be bullying them and they would be put out of his reach or something bad would happen to him, for example. Or a particularly bad haircut or piece of clothing would magically disappear or change color or shape into something that flattered them.

Hermione had explained this excitedly to the others. Luna, imaginative to the last, had guessed that they had magical powers. But it was Ginevra who had first learned to control the powers based on a tingling sensation they could all feel inside their bodies whenever they wanted something badly or they got angry, scared, or upset. She had figured out that they could wave their hands, channel the tingling, and change things in the world around them.

Every time something odd happened around one of them, the Dursleys would blame them and lock them into the cupboard under the stairs in the dark with the cleaning supplies and the spiders. Ginevra always took these punishments worse than anyone else - she was terrified of the dark, and like Hermione, she feared loneliness - just more secretly. Luna hated small, confining spaces and creepy crawly feelings, so she was next on the list of people who hated cupboard treatment. Channeling magic into their ears during cupboard punishments and listening to their aunt and uncle, they’d been able to hear old stories of their infancy - toys floating toward them above a crib, temper tantrums that shook and shattered things along the walls. Somehow the Dursleys had been able to figure out that the Potters had powers - they hid it from them, and this was why they feared the Potters’ imagination so greatly.

So the Potters had learned to suppress the powers when they didn’t want them to be seen, but channel them secretly when they needed them to get the things they wanted - faster speed running away from Dudley and his gang, covert revenge on Dudley, cleaning or cooking implements moving on their own to get chores done faster, cupboard doors unlocked at night, food stolen during spells without food. They could also sense magic in the world around them - from plants to animals.

So charming a motorcycle to fly with years more experience using their powers should be easy.

“What I want to know more about is the other dream we all have,” said Ginevra darkly. 

They all sobered. They knew what she meant. The other dream they’d all had was one of a flash of green light and a cacophony of female screaming and high, cold, cruel laughter. Harry had claimed that whenever he had the dream, he felt a burning pain in his upper left arm. But why would a car crash include flashes of green light, screaming, and laughing?

Once the Potters were ready for the day, they went down the stairs and into the kitchen and living room area. They switched chores every so often, so they all knew how to do everything when it came to tending to the house, from working on cars to sewing. Hermione went outside to tend to the flower beds, Luna began re-cleaning the already-spotless living room, and Ginevra and Harry made pancakes, coffee, bacon, and eggs in the wide, gleaming kitchen. Dudley’s eleventh birthday presents were clear behind them - the table was almost hidden beneath the massive mound of gifts.

“Looks like Dudley got the new racing bike he wanted,” Harry muttered bitterly to Ginevra. “Forget that he’s so fat he’ll never use it.”

“He never uses any of his presents,” said Ginevra reservedly. “You know that. And the ones he does, he breaks. Luna would tell us there’s no point in comparing our lack of presents to his countless presents, and Hermione would give us something quiet about how the Dursleys are the makers of their own ruin, but I don’t know. I enjoy the horrible expression on dear auntie and uncle’s faces when Dudley ruins yet another expensive gift.” She smirked vindictively. “Because they want to be angry with him, but they can’t because he’s their dear Duddykins.

“Besides, you couldn’t use the racing bike anyway. They never taught us how to bike ride or swim.”

They had to shut up then, because Uncle Vernon had entered the kitchen for his morning coffee and his newspaper. He was a vast man with a pot belly, a pouchy purple face, a black mustache, and tiny dark eyes. He was always dressed very formally, his dark hair slicked back. “What are you doing, girl? Where’s my coffee?” he barked at Ginevra.

Ginevra felt indignant fury well up inside her, choking her. But silently, her lips thin, reserved, she handed her uncle his morning cup of coffee.

“And you could stand to look a little more cheerful,” he added snappishly.

Ginevra gave a little sneer. Uncle Vernon saw women in a very certain light. He didn’t treat them all badly, necessarily, and in fact he acknowledged his own wife and sister as strong women. But he mandated that he had to have a stay-at-home mother for a wife. And he only saw women as useful for a few certain roles in life. Secretary. Grammar school teacher. Maid. Nun. His sister bred dogs out in the countryside, away from Surrey city, and even that he thought was a little out-there. He also enjoyed controlling things - the Potter girls were only allowed to wear long hair and dresses, for example, and he wanted to make sure they all knew how to cook, clean, sew, and serve people things. Not out of any concern for them, but because that was just what women were supposed to do. He was the kind of man who would respond to a rape accusation with, “What was the bloody woman wearing?” But he’d scoff if you called him sexist. Though he considered getting drunk too lower-class for a person of aspiring wealth like himself, sometimes he comfort-drank; this was when he was Never to Be Disturbed.

“Comb your hair!” Uncle Vernon added sharply to Harry, and then he sat down with his coffee and his paper. Everyone was henceforth forbidden from speaking to him. 

About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. (Aunt Petunia always got the haircuts; that was a female chore Uncle Vernon never did.) Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way - all over the place.

Harry said nothing, keeping his head down, silent and hateful.

The Potters had often reflected that the Dursleys must think themselves very good, taking in a bunch of ugly, unwanted orphans who were so resentful of the gifts they had been given. The Dursleys were just deluded enough to see it in that light.

Meanwhile, the Potters had dreamed all their lives of some unknown relation coming to take them away, but it had never happened. The Dursleys were their only family.

The Potter children were all crowded into the kitchen and breakfast was being finished by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. He was very overweight (all his food whims were catered to) with a large pink face, smooth blond hair, and small, watery blue eyes. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel. Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig. The Potter girls often commented that between Dudley’s rampant stupidity, his cruelty, and his appearance, he would be lucky if he ever found a wife.

Dudley came in with his mother’s hands over his eyes, his parents singing happy birthday to him. The hands were removed, the presents revealed; Dudley pounced on them delightedly and set to counting them. The Potters, who had never had a birthday celebrated at all, found the display privately nauseating.

The plates of breakfast were put on the table (by the Potter children). Dudley started complaining loudly that he’d only gotten thirty-six presents instead of the thirty-eight of last year. He threatened to have a tantrum over it - afraid Dudley would flip the table over again, Harry began wolfing down his food as fast as possible and the girls, who’d had both polite manners and high expectations for grades drilled into them for years by their aunt, pulled their plates into their laps - but then Aunt Petunia appeased him by promising to buy him two new presents today and he subsided, turning to unwrapping his presents.

Not before he proved that he did not know what thirty-seven (the actual number of presents) plus two was, though. Dudley had trouble with things like basic addition and counting. Hermione had once suggested that Dudley might have a learning disability, and Aunt Petunia had slapped Hermione over what she saw as a threat to Dudley’s perfection.

Just then, Aunt Petunia went into the back to answer her smartphone - the Potters only had old flip phones, and they lacked computers and music players completely; it was the Dursleys who got all the nice technology - and the Potters and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap a racing bike, a laptop computer, a television, a DVD player, an iPhone, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new video games, and a gold wristwatch. The wristwatch was Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge’s birthday present; she was far from up to date on modern technology.

Aunt Petunia reentered, looking both angry and worried. “Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take them.” She jerked her head in the Potters’ direction.

Dudley’s mouth fell open in horror, but the Potters looked pleased. Every year on Dudley’s birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, the fair, or the movies. Every year, or indeed whenever any fun family outing happened at all, the Potters were left behind with Mrs Figg. Mrs Figg was a very old woman over on Magnolia Crescent with several cats. She made the girls pick up after her and do chores for her, while Harry helped her look through pictures of her cats and tried to show her how to post them on ‘Inster-gram.’

Mrs Figg’s house smelled like rotting cabbage, which didn’t help. She never seemed to have mastered the use of basic home cleaning techniques like lemon rinds in the garbage disposal, air fresheners, or throwing out old food.

To say they were relieved they wouldn’t have to visit her would be an understatement.

“Now what?” said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at the Potters as though they’d planned this.

“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested.

“Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates them and she lives too far away.”

The Dursleys often spoke about the Potters like this, as though they weren’t there - or rather, as though they were something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a series of slugs.

And so the Dursleys began batting ideas back and forth, trying to find someone to babysit the Potters for the day so they didn’t have to put up with them. 

“We could stay behind and do some extra chores around the house,” Hermione finally suggested timidly. 

“Yeah! We could… clean up the kitchen or something,” said Ginevra, catching on.

“Right, you could just leave us here,” said Harry hopefully.

“It really would be easiest.” Luna gave her best smile.

They loved it when they were allowed to stay home alone. Ginevra went on the Internet using Dudley’s laptop, Harry played all Dudley’s video games, Luna and Hermione had ice cream and ice pops and lemonade and other sweets they were never usually allowed to have, and then they all watched television together on the telly they were never usually allowed to commandeer.

Aunt Petunia glared at them all suspiciously, looking as though she had just swallowed a lemon. “And come back and find the house in ruins?” she snarled.

“This house has never been anything less than spotless after we’ve finished with it,” said Ginevra resentfully, her teeth gritted.

“Just give us a chance,” Hermione pleaded.

Luna was watching the whole thing reservedly.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. The Dursleys didn’t trust the Potters, because the Potters were magic. “Certainly not,” said Uncle Vernon, putting his foot down on the matter. “I’ll let this place burn down before I let you lot in it alone. Same goes for my car.”

But the Potters had still won. “Well then,” said Ginevra triumphantly, “I guess we’ll just have to go to the zoo with you!” They would still get to be somewhere that wasn’t school, the cupboard, or Mrs Figg’s cabbage-smelling living room - even if it was with the Dursleys.

Hermione, Harry, and Luna brightened as the Dursleys froze, looking horrified. It was true - they had no family besides Marge and all their friends were out of town on summer holiday. Mrs Figg had been their last resort.

Dudley began to fake-cry loudly to get what he wanted - something he’d picked up from watching the Potter girls with teachers at school when they were little, back before they’d realized crying did very little to solve life’s problems. Once he had his parents’ adoring, concerned attention, he wailed that he didn’t want the Potters to come because they always spoiled everything for him. Then, when Aunt Petunia threw her arms around him (sucker till the end), he shot his cousins a nasty grin through the gap in his mother’s arms.

The Potters glared back. Dudley didn’t care. He just wanted them to be as unhappy and downtrodden as possible.

Aunt Petunia turned around to her nephew and nieces. “Stop looking that way at Duddy!” she snapped, completely missing the look Dudley was giving his cousins. She looked around and Dudley looked down, pretending to cry again.

Just then, the doorbell rang - “Oh, good Lord, they’re here!” said Aunt Petunia frantically - and a moment later, Dudley’s best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people’s arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.

So Uncle Vernon took the Potters into the back, putting his large purple face right up close to theirs. “If you ruin this for my son, I can’t lock you all into the cupboard at once, so I’ll have to get creative,” he hissed. “Don’t make me.” Then he stormed away. They knew what he was really talking about, though he didn’t know it - their magic. He didn’t want their magic ruining Dudley’s birthday.

And so with this warning, they were all packed into the huge minivan with Dudley and Piers and allowed to go to the zoo with the Dursley family. They were happy. They were going to the zoo for the first time in their lives - for the first time they were going somewhere fun.

Dudley and Piers rambled on about video games in the backseat while Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia in the front seat. Uncle Vernon liked to complain about things and announce his narrow-minded opinions to the world. People at work, the Potters, the city council, the Potters, the bank, and the Potters were just a few of his favorite subjects. Sometimes he also complained about black people or homosexuals. This morning, it was motorcycles.

“Roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums,” he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

Harry opened his mouth, perhaps to talk about the motorcycle dream, but his sisters elbowed him in the ribs. When he looked at them, they shook their heads. Talking about dreams around Uncle Vernon was a definite no-no.

Unfettered, Uncle Vernon moved on to the man’s appearance, complaining about tattoos and “young people’s attire.”

It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because it would look odd to give ice cream to two children and not the other four and the Dursleys had an all-encroaching fear of looking odd, they bought the Potters some cheap fruit-flavored ice pops. Harry got lemon, Ginevra got raspberry, Luna got grape, and Hermione got strawberry. It was rare that they got any kind of dessert at all - the Dursleys wouldn’t feed them any, and they were never given any pocket money, despite all the chores they did. So this was a special treat.

The Potters had the best morning they’d had in a long time. The zoo was a long, safari like place full of vast enclosures containing all specimen of fascinating animals. The sun beat down on them as they walked from enclosure to enclosure. The Potters were careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn’t fall back on their favorite bullying hobby. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his Knickerbocker Glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry was allowed to finish the first.

After lunch, they went to reptile house. 

Aunt Petunia stayed outside. “The girls should stay with me. Girls don’t like snakes,” she mandated, in the same way she’d mandated that girls were always polite and well-mannered and girls got good grades.

“I want to see the snake,” Ginevra offered. She smirked when her aunt glared at her.

“I want to see all the animals!” Luna, who had always loved animals, said brightly, bouncing on the balls of her feet and lifting her arms wide.

“I’ll go inside,” Hermione offered, more neutral but curious.

And so they left Aunt Petunia behind and entered the reptile house.

It was cool and dark inside, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. The cold black stone reptile house was like a maze, crisscrossing hallways displaying bright windows full of vast, vast lizards and snakes - all in separate containers, so they didn’t eat one another.

Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. A brown Brazilian boa constrictor, it could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car and crushed it into a dinky little bin, but at the moment it didn’t look in the mood. It was entirely still, its head twisted completely away from them.

Dudley spent about five minutes commanding his father to pound on the glass trying to get the snake to move. When this didn’t work, he moaned about the snake being boring and shuffled away. His father followed him.

The Potters moved in front of the tank to look at the snake. Ginevra turned around, and saw Piers standing there. “Buzz off,” she said, annoyed.

Piers smirked. “I think I’ll just stay right here.”

“Aww,” said Luna, falsely sweet. “Does Piers have a little crush?”

Piers’s smirk fell flat.

“On the snake, perhaps,” said Hermione in dry amusement.

“Alright, alright, I’m going.” Piers scowled and left.

The girls looked around - and saw that the snake had twisted itself around and risen to look Harry dead in the eye. Harry’s eyes had widened. “... Hello, you,” he whispered softly, but that wasn’t what the girls heard. They heard a strange hissing noise issue from Harry’s mouth.

And the snake hissed back. “Hello, amigo,” it said, and Harry understood it, though all the girls heard was further strange hissing.

“Harry, how are you doing that?” said Hermione in amazement.

“Doing what?” Harry turned to them, confused, now speaking plain English.

“You’re hissing snake language! You’re talking to the snake!” said Ginevra disbelievingly.

“We can talk to animals!” cried Luna, delighted, but Ginevra shook her head.

“We can’t understand the snake,” she pointed out. “Only Harry can.”

“And besides, if it were all animals, we would have figured it out long before now with Marge’s dogs,” Hermione said knowledgably. “I think it’s just snakes.”

Harry turned back to the tank, puzzled. “I thought I was just speaking English. How can I speak a language without knowing I can…?” he muttered. “I wonder what his name is. He called me amigo.”

“That could be his name,” said Luna. “Amigo. It means friend in Spanish. And it’s male. He’s a boy, right?”

“A man,” said Harry, nodding. “Yeah.

“What do you think of the name Amigo?” he added to the snake.

“I think it’s a name I get to choose for myself, so it’s better than the one I already have,” said the snake. “It’s awful in here. You can’t imagine. No company except morons drumming their fingers on the glass. Everyone gawking at me. I sleep a lot.”

Harry relayed to the girls what he’d said. Hermione and Luna were sympathetic, but Ginevra was more canny. “Ask him if he’s ever found another human who can speak snake like you can,” she ordered.

Harry turned back to Amigo and relayed the question. “I’ll tell you,” said Amigo, with a sudden, snake-like smile, “if you let me out of this tank.”

Harry told his sisters, and the Potters seemed to resist the urge to laugh. “Why, so you can eat us?” Harry relayed back in amusement. Amigo slumped, scowling.

“Well,” he muttered, “it was worth a shot. No, human,” he sighed, “I have never met anyone like you before. Everyone has a kind of energy inside them, but yours and your sisters’ is different from everyone else’s who passes through this zoo.”

“That makes sense,” said Luna thoughtfully. “He’s talking about our magic.”

“We should all learn snake,” said Ginevra suddenly. Her siblings stared at her. She shrugged. “I think it’s worth a shot.”

“She’s right!” said Hermione in excitement, catching on. “It’s a language just like any other. Anyone must be able to learn it!”

“But I seem to only be able to speak it when I’m looking at a snake,” said Harry, still looking nonplussed.

“Then I’ll draw you a picture of a snake,” said Luna, shrugging.

“Yes, exactly,” said Hermione briskly. “And we’ll get a dictionary, and have you say each word in the dictionary using snake language. And in that way we’ll learn the language.”

“We should get a notebook from school,” said Ginevra. “So we can copy it all down. A planner or something.”

Suddenly, Luna’s eyes widened and she yanked her brother out of the way. “Watch out!” Dudley charged right into the space where Harry had been. He and Piers glued themselves to the front of the tank, wowing over the reared snake. Amigo hissed in annoyance at them and they cheered stupidly.

“That was a close one,” said Hermione. “If he’d hit Harry and Harry had let off a spurt of magic -”

“My control’s gotten better,” Harry muttered in protest.

“All the same, a thanks would be in order,” said Ginevra, annoyed.

Harry softened, smiling. “... Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Luna wryly.


	3. New Communications

The Potters were gathered together in a circle at the local public library, in the back behind dusty, homely rows of bookshelves, past threadbare carpet, and to the wood chairs and tables. They were sitting around a table, Harry looking between an opened, thumbed-through dictionary with bent corners, and a green and gold drawing Luna had made of a snake. Luna held it up for him. Ginevra and Hermione, over in the corner, held a thick leather-bound notebook filled with strange symbols and a pen. Weak sunlight filtered through the dusty library windows onto the scene.

They’d decided the Dursleys’ house wasn’t safe and this was the next best place to learn snake speak, a place Dudley wouldn’t venture into to save his life. They had to speak quietly, of course, but this was of little consequence to them.

The first two orders of business had been figuring out how to make symbols for the strange “sss” and “shh” sounds and the vowels in between, and how to get Harry to consciously hear himself hissing when he spoke snake. Harry’d had to use his imagination a lot at first, pretending the drawn snake was a real snake. It helped when Luna made her picture move, hence why she was holding it. Then, once he’d listened to himself, he’d gotten better at figuring out what was snake speak and what wasn’t. And he could tell the others.

So they made their way through the dictionary, putting a series of indecipherable symbols beside each word in the notebook. Hermione did most of the writing; her handwriting was neatest. Ginevra, however, was better at listening to and copying sounds. So Harry would explain something to her, and she would explain it to the others and tell Hermione what to write down.

“No,” said Harry in amusement, “gorilla is SSSIIEEHESH.”

“Sssiieehesh,” Ginevra copied, nodding, making her voice a throaty hiss. “Okay.” She turned to a bewildered Luna and Hermione. “It’s like this,” she said, and she told Hermione what to write down, her sisters copying the sound alongside her.

They were making progress. By the middle of July, they would have made it through the entire dictionary. After that it was all a matter of memorization and putting words in the correct order.

-

“Have fun. Try not to kill each other over the summer. Good luck in secondary school,” said their teacher. The students were tense in their seats, eager to be outside in the sunshine, on their last day of school. “And - school’s out!”

Students leaped out of their desks and to their feet and charged toward the door, cheering. Dudley and his gang pushed and punched other kids out of their way as they sprinted toward the classroom door.

“Dursley - Dursley, no, wait -!” The teacher was helpless. He couldn’t wade past all the other students to make it to Dudley and his gang.

The Potters looked at each other and stood, making it out long after everyone else. No one was waiting for “those odd Potters” anyway. 

Together, they walked out of St Grogory’s for the last time.

-

The Potters were glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley’s gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. When they weren’t busy breaking and ruining all of Dudley’s new toys (Dudley once ran over little old Mrs Figg with his racing bike as she crossed Privet Drive with her crutches), the rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley’s favorite sport - Potter Hunting.

That was why the Potters spent as much time as possible over that summer out of the house together. They would practice snake speak at the library, or sometimes they would take the free public bus and make their way around Surrey, wandering around, window-shopping, and talking about the end of the holidays, where they could see a tiny ray of hope.

When September came, the Potters would be going off to secondary school, and for the first time in their lives, they wouldn’t be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon’s old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there as well. The Potters, on the other hand, were going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.

“I think we should practice what Stonewall’s going to feel like for you all,” he said, grinning, leaning over the staircase banister. “You can all stand in a line and I’ll steal each of your lunch money in turn and then I’ll give you all swirleys one by one.”

Hermione shut down emotionally, as she always did when yelled at or bullied. Luna scowled, her sunniness fading. Harry was ready with a heated retort, but it was Ginevra who got to Dudley first. She flicked a finger behind her back, channeling magic, and Dudley suddenly bent over and heaved, a horrible, crippling pain in his stomach.

“Oh, no!” said Ginevra in faux concern, her eyes widening. “Aunt Petunia, I think Dudley’s stomach is hurting!”

“Yeah, he looks like he’s about to hurl,” Harry agreed.

Aunt Petunia hurried over. “Oh, my poor Duddy!” she cooed, and she led a confused Dudley up to his bedroom.

Pain and embarrassment were another Potter Magic Specialty. They were excellent at secretly humiliating teachers who picked on them, too. Hey, it could have been worse. They could have made the staircase banister break under Dudley’s weight instead.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform. Uncle Vernon was at work that day, so that left the Potters with Mrs Figg. Mrs Figg wasn’t as bad as usual. It turned out she’d broken her leg tripping over one of her cats and she didn’t seem quite as fond of them as before. She had the Potters do a few basic household chores for her, and then she let them sit on the afghan covering the worn old sofa and watch a bit of television. They flipped between cartoons and reality shows. She even fed them a chocolate cake that tasted as though she’d had it for several years.

That evening, Aunt Petunia surprised the Potter girls with three new grey Stonewall High school-girls uniforms in their sizes. (Ginevra and Luna were smalls; Hermione was a medium.) Dudley also had his new uniform. The Potters were commanded to put their uniforms away, and then everyone was forced to stand around in the living room and watch Dudley parade around in his new uniform.

Smeltings boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other when the teachers weren’t looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.

As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn’t believe it was her ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Harry didn’t trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might have already cracked from trying not to laugh. The Potter girls were disgusted, watching Dudley’s bottom jiggle underneath tight orange knickerbockers.

“I think I’m the one who’s going to throw up this time,” Ginevra whispered, and the other Potters tried even harder not to laugh.

-

The next morning in the kitchen, a horrible smell emanated from a large metal tub in the sink. When Harry learned that this was Aunt Petunia dyeing some of Dudley’s old things grey in lieu of a school uniform for Harry, Harry looked downcast. Luna put a comforting, sympathetic hand on his shoulder as they sat down at the table. Hermione, ever the clever one, whispered, “It’s okay. We can shrink the clothes later and claim they shrunk in the wash.” Harry brightened and Hermione smiled.

Uncle Vernon and Dudley came in. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper; Dudley banged his Smelting stick on the table. Then they heard the click of the mail slot and the flop of letters on the doormat. Uncle Vernon commanded Dudley to go get the mail, but Dudley managed to foist the chore off onto Harry.

Harry was silent in the hall for a long time, but when Uncle Vernon called to him he finally came back in, looking shaken. He handed Uncle Vernon a bill and a holiday postcard from Aunt Marge, who was currently on the Isle of Wight. Then he handed his siblings each a letter. He had one of his own.

“What’s that?” said Dudley, brightening.

“Probably from the library,” said Hermione. “You know how much time we’ve been spending there.”

Dudley deflated at the mention of things that would make him intelligent.

But when the Potter girls looked down, they immediately saw why Harry had been so shaken. These letters were obviously not from the library, and they had never gotten a letter from any other source. Yes, the letters were addressed to them: Mr H Potter, Miss G Potter, Miss L Potter, and Miss H Potter.

But everything else was different. The envelope was made of heavy yellowish parchment, the address written in emerald green ink. There was no return address and no stamp, begging the question of how the letters had reached them in the first place. Then there was the address line itself:

The Smallest Bedroom

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging 

Surrey

These letter-writers knew which room of the house they slept in. 

They turned the letters around and saw a purple wax seal on the back bearing a coat of arms: a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. 'Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus,' said tiny Latin letters above the coat of arms. It looked almost like the motto for some fancy school.

At last, they slit the envelopes open and two pieces of parchment fell out of each. One was a letter. It read:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)

Dear Mr (or Miss) Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. 

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours Sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall 

Deputy Headmistress

It was signed in fancy cursive writing at the bottom.

The Potters looked at each other, nodded, and stood. “We’re done with our breakfast,” said Harry determinedly, and with the Dursleys staring after them, they hurried upstairs to their bedroom.

-

They passed by the guest room, by Dudley's bedroom, by Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's bedroom, until they reached their own at the end of the hall. They made sure Aunt Petunia, a nosy woman, wasn’t lurking outside their bedroom door, and then they began speaking in hushed tones.

“It could be a prank,” said Harry.

“But from who?” said Hermione, her eyes wide with surprise and concern. “Our aunt and uncle have no sense of humor and they would never joke about anything as nonsensical as magic, and Dudley and his gang wouldn’t be this smart in a prank. We know no one else who is close enough to us to attempt something like this.”

“And besides, it tallies with everything that’s happened to us so far,” said Ginevra intently. “Our powers. The Dursleys’ fear of them. The way we know nothing about our past or our parents. How do we know our parents weren’t a witch and a wizard? It could explain why we are the way we are.”

“There could be a whole world for us,” said Luna, thrilled, her eyes even bigger than usual, daydreamy with imagination. “A whole world of wizards and witches out there. This school wants us. I don’t know, it just feels right to me.”

“What does it mean they await our owl?” said Harry, curious.

“I think I’ve figured that out,” said Hermione, excited. “They must use old fashioned messenger owls, just like they use old fashioned quills and parchment. That would explain why these letters got to us with no stamp and no return address.”

“Oh, great,” said Harry, annoyed. “So where are we going to find a messenger owl -? Hey, what’s that irritating tapping noise, anyway?” They looked around - and found an owl tapping at the bedroom window. It stopped when they saw it, blinking big eyes at them matter of factly.

“... Definitely not a prank,” said Harry disbelievingly, as they all stared.

And so they wrote their letter together, on a piece of school paper with pen, in Hermione’s handwriting.

Dear Professor McGonagall,

We are the Potter children. We would of course love to come to Hogwarts. But we were raised by a non magical aunt and uncle who don’t like magic. We know nothing about witches and wizards, or about our past. Before now, we didn’t even know we were witches and wizards, or that there was a school or a world full of people like us.

How do we buy our school supplies? How do we get to school? Can we still attend Hogwarts if our aunt and uncle won’t pay for it?

Please send back whatever information you can.

Thank you for your time,

Ginevra & Hermione & Luna & Harry Potter

Hermione handed the letter to the owl and whispered, “Take this directly to Professor McGonagall.” She felt silly, saying it, but the owl immediately nodded its head and flew away through the open window.

Harry looked down at the school supplies list in his hand, the other piece of parchment. “I hope she responds,” he said worriedly. “Look at some of these supplies… Robes, cloaks, and pointed hats. A cauldron. A wand. Spell books. It’s almost too ridiculous to be true. Where are we even going to find any of this?”

-

The next day over breakfast, there was a brisk knock on the front door. This time it was Hermione who was forced to answer the door. She swung it open - and no one was there. She looked down to find a tabby cat with square markings around its eyes sitting on the doorstep, looking solemnly up at her, its tail flicking.

Hermione was confused, and then the cat turned into a woman, a tall woman with a bun of black hair, square glasses, and a strict face. She wore a black business suit and carried a briefcase. “Miss Potter?” she said, looking Hermione over. “I am Professor Minerva McGonagall. I received your letter.”

The rest of the Potters came skidding into the hall, and Hermione looked behind herself with big eyes. “... She just turned into a cat and back,” she said, numb, pointing at the Professor. The Potters brightened, excited, thrilled.

Then their aunt and uncle came sprinting into the hall. Uncle Vernon grabbed each Potter by the scruffs of their necks, two in each hand, and tossed them in the direction of their aunt. 

“You’re not getting them!” he wheezed, red-faced, sprinting at Professor McGonagall. “Petunia, take them and run!” McGonagall unleashed her wand.

Petunia grabbed all five children and turned to run. She screamed at a flash of violet light and then in Uncle Vernon’s place was a pig. “Duddy! Duddy, run!” she shrieked, letting her son go ahead of her. Then there was another flash of violet light and Aunt Petunia was a chicken, squawking in fear and running around the room. Dudley turned around in fear, saw the flash of violet light. The Potters had good enough reflexes to leap out of its trajectory, but Dudley was too big and slow to make it in time. In his place, a moment later, was a duck.

The Potter were having flashbacks of shouts, crying, screaming, green light. They were curled up in a corner. Hermione was crying, Ginevra’s eyes were wide and terrified, Luna was shaking, Harry was still and numb. Professor McGonagall went to walk over to them, and Harry threw himself over his terrified sisters, shielding them.

“... It’s okay,” said McGonagall, pausing, putting away her wand and raising her hands slowly, looking pale and shaken herself. “I’m here to save you, not hurt you. I’m here to take you away to a place where you can become someone like me.”

At this, the chicken squawked louder, the pig snorted, and the duck quacked and waddled away to hide itself in the corner.

“Oh, shut up,” McGonagall snapped. “Your efforts were all for naught. They’re going to become witches and a wizard anyway.”

“You mean to say…?” said Luna, lost for words.

“Yes. Your aunt and uncle knew about your magic all along,” said McGonagall. “I am here to explain everything to you.

“Your mother and father were also a wizard and witch. Your mother was born to Muggles, non magical people - like her sister, your Aunt Petunia.

“Your aunt and uncle were jealous, you see. And scared. I believe that all these years they've been trying to suppress your magic.”


	4. McGonagall's Explanation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I use this explanation for most of my Muggleborn explanation chapters in most of my Harry Potter fanfic stories. I just find it a smart, convenient explanation. I always found it a pity that an official teacher didn’t explain everything to Harry. So if you’ve seen something like this chapter floating around the Internet before, it’s probably on one of my other fanfiction accounts.
> 
> The things the Potters learn in this chapter obviously varies pretty widely from canon.

They shepherded the farm animals into the kitchen, shutting and locking all the doors. Then the five of them sat down in the Dursleys’ living room with cups of tea, the Potters on the sofa and McGonagall in an armchair, the Potters still staring in awe at Professor McGonagall across from them.

“I suppose you have many questions,” she said briskly. “I am going to try to answer as many as I can. Then we’ll see if you have any left.

“My job is typically to go around to all Muggleborn students - Muggles being non magical people - and introduce them to our world. We didn’t think you’d have need of it because your parents were a witch and wizard. Your mother was a Muggleborn, your father what is called a Pureblood - born from a long line of ancient wizarding stock. However, as you know nothing, I shall give you the standard Muggleborn speech.

“There is a whole other world of wizards and witches out there, a world entirely separate from the Muggle one. Muggle, by the way, is how witches and wizards refer to non magical people. We witches and wizards, we hide in little pockets among Muggle places. A shopping center is hidden away in one city, a few wizarding homes are hidden on the edge of a village, etcetera. There are less of us, which makes it easier.”

“How does nobody ever notice?”

“We use something called a Notice Me Not charm. Muggles are charmed not to see what’s around us. Undetectable Expansion charms are handy too -- making much space within a place which on the outside has very little space. Both charms are heavily regulated by the Ministry of Magic, but they are useful in building large centers or residential sections.

“Now, there are several ways of traveling around the wizarding world, from pocket to pocket. If a witch or wizard sticks out their wand arm anywhere in Britain, a wizarding bus route will immediately find them, a route which can travel all over the country at lightning speeds, including to London. There is also Flooing -- traveling from wizarding fireplace to wizarding fireplace. For adults, there is also Apparition -- teleporting from one place to another. There is flying -- usually on broomsticks -- though never around Muggles. There are Portkeys -- inanimate objects charmed to take whoever is touching them to a specific place at a specific time -- usually used by the Ministry, to stagger magical entrance for Quidditch games and concerts and other such things. 

“There are also various ways of communicating. One can use Floo powder to call other fireplaces and talk to the people within, and the most common method of communication is by messenger owl. Messenger owls have magic too -- they can find any person in the world, can detect when someone wants to send mail to their owner, and can travel at remarkably fast speeds. We also have something called technomagic, Muggle devices specially charmed to work off of and around magic. We have laptops, iPods and iPhones, radios, music players, and the like. Hogwarts also has wifi capabilities.

“Hogwarts is a boarding school that runs on a seven-year training system. It’s a medieval castle in Scotland built on ancient Celtic ground -- the Druids were talented wand makers and scholars of ancient times, very important to British wizarding past.”

“The Druids were the forerunners of Wiccans, weren’t they?”

“They were. We wizards and witches have our own special brand of spirituality, something Christians would call Pagan. We worship nature, the earth from which all magic springs. We are Wiccans, essentially. Our saints, you could say, are powerful wizards and witches of times past. ‘Merlin!’, for example, is a common wizard epithet. We do believe in an afterlife, but only as a place to return to in between the reincarnation of our energies.

“In any case. The grounds of Hogwarts contain a lake, a forest, a graveyard, and a sports stadium. Connected to the grounds is the only all-magical village in Britain, called Hogsmeade. Both are protected under heavy anti-Muggle enchantments, built out in the middle of nowhere. You will reach there by wizarding train -- a steam engine. There are four school houses, and each student is sorted into one. You have money you inherited from your parents, so you will be able to pay to attend Hogwarts, but even if you hadn’t the school is a public school, funded by our government. There is even a fund for impoverished students to buy their school supplies. The current headmaster is Albus Dumbledore. He’s a very important man. He’s on the Wizengamot Council and is a part of the International Confederation of Wizards.”

“Wizengamot Council?”

“The wizarding world has its own government -- the Ministry of Magic -- with its own Minister for Magic. The Minister governs Great Britain; other countries have their own wizarding governments. Departments of our government include the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Department of International Magical Cooperation, Department of Magical Transportation, Department of Magical Games and Sports, and the research division, The Department of Mysteries. 

“The International Confederation of Wizards is actually the council that originally created the current Ministry. New wizards are voted in when an old one phases out. The Wizengamot Council is wizarding Britain’s high court of law, and also preceded the Ministry. It sends arrested and convicted people to Azkaban prison, an island fortress guarded by Dark creatures called Dementors.

“The Ministry is hidden underneath Whitehall, deep in London. There is also a wizarding shopping center in London, called the Alleys, but it is not connected to the pocket holding the Ministry. The Alleys are where I will take you later to buy your school supplies.

“Now, I should tell you what subjects are covered at Hogwarts. The main classes are Herbology -- or, the study of magical plants, because herbs help brew potions -- History of Magic, Potions, Transfiguration -- or, the study of using magic to turn things into other things, which I teach -- Charms -- or, the study of using magic to change the properties of things -- Defense Against the Dark Arts -- the Dark Arts being violent magic -- and Astronomy, because the movements of the planets are very important to studies of magic, particularly magical energy theories. How your magic moves on a sub level depends on how the stars are aligned. Electives you can take starting in third year include Divination -- or, the study of seeing into the future -- Care of Magical Creatures, Muggle Studies, Ancient Runes -- or, the study of ancient runic magical scripts and the powers of individual runes, useful in wards and curses and the breaking of both -- and Arithmancy -- or, the study of the magical properties of numbers and numerology, which can be of great use in spellcrafting. You want to know what letters and syllables to use to make a spell? Look at their numerological magical strength. You can see the usefulness.

“Sometimes, upon upper division student petition, other elective subjects will be taught. Those include Alchemy, magical languages such as Mermish, and Occlumency and Legilimency -- the basics of mind magic, namely mind blocking and mind reading. 

“It must seem at this point like magic can do anything, but there are certain things it cannot do -- it can’t bring true life to a lifeless object, and it can’t create food, water, or real money. On an added side note, Pureblood witches and wizards spend their first six years being privately tutored in reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are important at Hogwarts. You read textbooks, write essays, and several classes, such as Potions and Arithmancy, require mathematical calculation.

“Now, check your envelope again. There should be a second piece of parchment inside, detailing school materials required. Very good. Now, let’s go through it together.

“Black robes, cloaks, and pointed hats as a uniform. When not out among Muggles, we always wear robes, along with what you would call Victorian-era wear. All pupils’ clothes should carry name tags -- that’s because we have elves to clean your rooms, cook your food, and do your laundry. You won’t see them, they don’t like to be seen. Course books. Quills, ink, and parchment. For Potions, a cauldron, vials, scales, a knife, dragon hide protective gloves, and potions ingredients from the Apothecary -- that’s rather like a Muggle pharmacy. A telescope for Astronomy. A wand for spell work. Each student is allowed a pet -- either an owl, a cat, or a toad. Oh, and no first year is allowed a flying broomstick -- you spend your first year learning flying on the school brooms.

“Once you finish school, of course, you go out into the working world. Wizards and witches have stable career paths just like any other. As for wizarding jobs, there are really four kinds. You can do a working-class job, like be a shop clerk or a caretaker or something. (Most shop jobs are working class jobs; the Industrial Revolution never really hit our world and most of our businesses are small and self-made.) You can work in teaching, in Healing, for the bank (which is mainly run by goblins who need wizards and witches to make and break the curses around their vaults), or you can work for the government; you can be a journalist -- there are newspapers and magazines. Or you can specialize in something magical -- be a Herbologist, or an Arithmancer, or an Auror (which is a Dark wizard catcher, rather like a policeman), or a Quidditch player or a broom maker, or a dragon tamer or a magizoologist, or a potioneer for the Apothecaries. And then, of course, there are also people in the arts -- theater, music, painting, photography, writing, radio disc jockeys, etc. 

“Quidditch is the main wizarding sport in Europe, played on broomsticks. Each house at Hogwarts has a Quidditch team; I played the sport myself when I attended Hogwarts many years ago. We do use photography, and our photos and paintings are charmed to move according to a few basic personality traits, creating a two dimensional form of sentience. And yes, we do have modern music -- radio, bands, record players, etc. We typically use new forms of sound with more old fashioned instruments and themes.”

“So it’s like steampunk.”

“What’s that?”  

“... Never mind.”

“Some other side notes: People don’t discriminate by race, gender, or sexual orientation in the wizarding world. What Muggles would call alternative relationships are welcomed: women and women can get married, men and men can get married, there can even be a three or four-way marriage relationship. People of different races intermingle without fear, and gender and sexual orientation are seen as fluid things. 

“However, wizards and witches do discriminate by blood. Many wizards and witches even today think Muggles, Muggleborn witches and wizards -- such as your mother -- and even people raised in Muggle families should be kept out of the wizarding world.

“You see, wizards and witches had it badly during the witch hunts. Most adults could escape Muggle clutches, but Muggles did often used to set fire to wizarding children. That’s why the magical world first separated from the Muggle one, and it’s why we try to be accepting of diversity -- we know what it’s like to be discriminated against. Some people became very insulated here in our own little world -- they have trouble letting go of the past.

“There was much controversy. A lot of people, even today, think Muggleborn witches and wizards aren’t safe in the wizarding world -- that they’ll have some Muggle Christian self-hatred complex and will carry it in to a bunch of children who don’t have any problem being wizards. Or that the Muggles’ tether to rationalism will interfere with their ability to perform the more nonsensical forms of magic. Also keep in mind that witches and wizards have been out of contact with Muggles since medieval times, and imagine Muggle standards of cleanliness and livelihood based on that last impression. I say that as a Halfblood myself.

“But the thing is, there aren’t enough witches and wizards to sustain a purely Pureblood population. Wizards and witches would all become incredibly inbred if they kicked out all the people with Muggles in their families, the ethical problems of forbidding legitimate wizards and witches entry aside. That’s why so many children who come to Hogwarts are Muggleborns. And there are a lot of Muggleborns.”

“So where do Muggleborns come from?”

“There are several theories. The most common one says that some witches and wizards marry Muggles and have Muggle families. The magic skips a few generations and then back flips viciously back into the gene pool. It’s hard to tell, though, because sometimes a Muggle and a witch can procreate and give birth to several magical children.

“Some Pureblood witches and wizards try to say Muggleborns stole their magic. But no one credible believes that. Magic can’t be stolen.

“Finally, a note on being around Muggles. Wizards and witches have to dress in Muggle clothes around Muggles, and are commanded to act as ordinary as possible in their presence. This can be hard -- wizards and witches only ever wear robes and pointed hats, or perhaps Victorian-era wear like top hats and pocket watches and corsets and handkerchiefs, so Muggle fashion is a struggle for them. But wizards and witches do have little ‘tells’ -- they’ll always try to wear purple and green when out in Muggle public, so they can spot each other in a crowd.

“Let’s see, what else should you know…? Ah, yes, while Harry is a biological Potter, the three girls were all adopted by the Potters from separate families. Closed adoptions - not even I know who your biological parents were.” The girls paused, feeling very strange. “Not to fret, though, you are Potters by blood. A blood ritual officiated by a Wiccan priest made it so. And your Potter parents died protecting you. They loved you very much.”

“Died protecting us?” said Harry hoarsely. “We were told they died in a car crash.”

“Impossible for two reasons,” said McGonagall crisply. “First, wizards and witches heal much faster and live much longer than Muggles, can emanate healing magic around their bodies to heal themselves, and the talented ones can even create wards or shields to save themselves from heavy blows. It would take a very inept and weakened witch or wizard to die in a car accident or during childbirth. And that your parents certainly were not.

“But secondly, if you can teleport with as many people as your hands can carry by your side, you don’t exactly need a car.” McGonagall’s voice dripped with sarcasm. 

“Then why do we get to Hogwarts by train?”

“Because of the special protections around Hogwarts castle forbidding unexpected or unwanted entry,” said McGonagall simply. “No one can Apparate inside Hogwarts grounds. No, your parents did not die in a car accident.”

“So how did they die?”

McGonagall shifted, looking away, uncomfortable. “... It starts with a wizard, a Dark wizard, who performed violent, illegal acts. He called himself the Lord Voldemort -- which is French for ‘flight from death.’ This Lord Voldemort sought immortality, which even wizards -- who age slower than Muggles -- have never been able to master. But his main goal was to destroy all Muggles and Muggleborns, kill them. He was one of those prejudiced who wanted everything to do with Muggles wiped from the face of the earth. He gathered a whole army full of followers who thought like he did, mostly old blue-blood Pure-blood families and Dark creatures, and they began a civil war against the Ministry. He killed so many people, most wizards and witches are afraid to even speak his name.

“Your parents fought on the Ministry’s side, defending Muggles and Muggleborns. Your father was a rich Pureblood from an old blue-blood big-money family, your mother a kind and beautiful but poor Muggleborn with a Muggle sister (your Aunt Petunia), so obviously they supported unconventional Muggle-wizarding relationships. It caused quite the scandal, really, their marriage. 

“In any case, your father was a duelist and your mother was a Healer. Dumbledore led the Light’s fight against the Dark side -- and word has it even Voldemort was afraid of him and his power. Voldemort never tried to touch Hogwarts; it’s one of the safest and most fortified places in the world, and it’s led by Dumbledore.

“Your parents were so powerful that Voldemort came after them personally, so they went into hiding, where they gave birth to and christened Harry. They then adopted Ginevra, Hermione, and Luna, for reasons that were lost to us the minute they were murdered.

“But Voldemort found your family, hiding out in a little village called Godric’s Hollow, on Halloween night, one of the most powerfully magical holidays. He came to your house, and killed your parents in front of you. You four were only a year old. Then he tried to kill you. But it didn’t work. No one knows why. The Killing Curse rebounded off of Harry’s upper left arm, leaving a lightning bolt curse scar, and all we know is that after that your house exploded and Voldemort was gone. They never found a body, he just... disappeared. Without him, his entire side fell apart, and the Light won the war.

“You four and that scar are actually quite famous in the wizarding world. You’re the Children Who Lived. You ended the war. No one knows anything about you, not even your names or the story of your adoption, let alone your location - only that you were four children, three girls and one boy, you were Potters, you survived a supposedly unsurvivable curse, there is a scar on the boy’s arm where the curse rebounded, and then you disappeared. Unbeknownst to most, Dumbledore gave you to your Muggle aunt and uncle, first because they were your only living relatives, but second because he didn’t want you to grow up famous and get swelled heads. We see where that got you. I was here when you were left with the Dursleys with a letter of explanation -- the Hogwarts groundskeeper Hagrid brought you here on a flying motorcycle, and Dumbledore left the letter. You’ve been here ever since.

“But in our world, at Hogwarts, everyone will know you. And, from your father, you will be fabulously rich.”

The Potter children were solemn. “So that nightmare…” Ginevra said quietly. 

“What nightmare?” said McGonagall sharply.

“Is the light from the Killing Curse green?” Luna asked, eyes big and innocent and questioning. McGonagall paled.

“We remember shouting,” said Hermione timidly, “and screaming, and -”

“And a man laughing,” said Harry darkly. “He had a high, cold, cruel laugh.”

“... Yes,” said McGonagall, blinking tears back from her eyes, looking shaken. “Yes, that would be him. Lord Voldemort, or as most people call him, You Know Who. But take heart. Your parents died shielding you, and something must have worked, because what they wanted to happen did occur. You survived.”

The Potter children looked away, emotional. It took them a minute to compose themselves. For the first time in their living memory, they felt loved.

“Do you have any other questions?”

“... Can you tell us more about our parents?” 

“Of course. I knew them at Hogwarts; I was their teacher as well.” McGonagall smiled fondly. “Your father, James Potter, was quite the troublemaker at school. But he was charming, everyone liked him, he was very funny. He was also an excellent Quidditch player. And he excelled in my class, Transfiguration. He could be quite brilliant - when he applied himself, which he didn’t always do.

“Your mother, Lily Evans, was kind and imaginative, but quite fiery when she wanted to be. She was excellent at Charms and Healing, along with just about every other magic you could possibly think of.

“They were both very brave, strong people, and good soldiers. They put their money into a good cause. You should be proud of them. You look like them, you know, Harry. You look almost exactly like your father. But you have your mother’s eyes.”

"What about the Potters?” said Harry. “I know my mother’s side of the family, the Evans family, they were just ordinary Muggles, but...”

“Yes. You have a wizard ancestor from the twelfth century who invented several commonly used medicinal potions. He was always pottering around in his garden -- hence, ‘Potter.’ The Potters are rich because they get a cut of money every single time a Pepper-up Potion or a Skele-grow Potion is bought or made. That’s like the Muggle equivalent of having a major share of money in Tylenol sales.

“Let’s see, another of your ancestors was also a Muggle rights advocate, and no one in your family struck him off the family tree, which is why many of the stiff old Pureblood families don’t consider the Potters ‘true’ Purebloods... True Purebloods would have struck him off the family tree, you see.

“Oh! And you’re related to another famous Pureblood family called the Peverells. The Peverells married into the Potters centuries ago.”

“And we have all that money?” Harry asked, feeling dazed.

“You most certainly do. An ever-growing amount of money. Each of you has a trust fund you can access now, and then the main Potter family account when you come of age at seventeen. You also have Potter Manor, though you cannot live alone so you cannot access it yet. You do have to stay with your aunt and uncle, though we will certainly be making your stay more amenable. You can also have wizarding money transferred into Muggle money at our bank, so you’re wealthy in either world. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Please don’t tell our aunt and uncle we’re rich,” Hermione pleaded. “They would take all our money away from us.”

“We would never let them do that,” said Professor McGonagall, her eyes softening. “They will not be allowed to hurt you anymore. Not on my watch. But of course, if you wish, I will not tell them.”

“So now what?” said Harry. The Potters were all looking expectantly at Professor McGonagall. 

“Now,” said the Professor, smiling. “We take the wizarding bus route and go shopping.”


End file.
